Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be annoyed at Angela Eagle playing the 'woman' card

96 replies

Cguk81 · 12/07/2016 10:46

Apparently now is the time for Labour to have its first female leader. Surely she doesn't need to be playing the 'I'm a woman card' but should instead be focusing on her skills and talent, regardless of gender.

OP posts:
Footle · 12/07/2016 17:07

GrassGreenx, you have confused Angela Eagle with Andrea Leadsom, who has now been consigned to the dustbin of history.

LurkingHusband · 12/07/2016 17:11

There is no party for the working classes to align to anymore

Maybe, just maybe, that is because there's no such thing as "working class" anymore ?

Just a thought.

There's certainly class and class divides, I'm not an idiot.

VestalVirgin · 12/07/2016 17:25

It wound me up when I heard that. Yes it would be good to have more strong women in politics but not just because they are women but because they are good and the right person for the job....

No. In fact, we will have achieved true equality when as many incompetent women are in leadership positions as incompetent men are.

I reject the notion that women should only be able to be successful if they are competent. This is not the case for men, so why should it be the case for women?

Laiste · 12/07/2016 17:27

I know the threads moved on but i wanted to just say NO, YANBU about the point in the OP. I was appalled at that too. I was wording a thread in my head myself, but was too busy to start it.

APlaceOnTheCouch · 12/07/2016 18:12

Vestal yy I agree there are many many incompetent men in positions of influence and power. And having the equivalent number of incompetent women would be equality.
However AE saying Labour should have a woman because the Tories have had two does nothing for equality or feminism.

MintJulip · 12/07/2016 18:14

Good point Vestal.Smile

GoblinLittleOwl · 12/07/2016 18:18

I took exception to 'I'm a northern girl' on Radio 4.
She's clever, talented and has great ability, but she didn't come over well this morning, or really since she has undertaken the leadership challenge.
Pity, because she would be far better than the sinister Jeremy Corbyn.

wonkylegs · 12/07/2016 18:19

True true Vestal
still doesn't make her a good option and most blokes (even the incompetent ones) usually have a least one reason over 'I am a bloke' that they think they should be voted in for (however wrong they may be)

MintJulip · 12/07/2016 18:21

What do ordinary people want?
A job in a safe environment which pays enough to keep them & their family housed, fed, clothed & warm, with a bit extra for luxuries

And...^ a government that puts them^ first, not the poor from other EU countries as Frank Field said.

Wow another wonderful post Werkz! You have it all down to a T.

Mango agree with the imploding and starting again.

DailyMailAreMassiveCunts · 12/07/2016 20:48

Great discussion folks, am reading with interest. I actually think it is time for Labour to implode. Didn't occur to me until this afternoon but now I've thought it, I can't unthink it.

Lurkinghusband, I know what you mean but have you ever watched Toryboy? It's a great documentary about voting habits (honestly, it's worth a watch). It's set up in the NE in a constituency that is labour through and through despite their MP being pretty much AWOL for the past 15 years and being a total, total crook. Local people are interviewed and asked why they vote Labour. The answer is always 'my father voted Labour and his father voted Labour and his father voted Labour' etc etc ad finitum. It's those people i'm thinking of, those who, to the core of them are working class.

LuluJakey1 · 12/07/2016 21:17

Angela Eagle is very uninspiring. As a long term Labour Party voter and member there is no way I would ever vote for her as leader. She has an awful, irritating voice and very mannered way of talking. She is dull and repetitive.

I fear the party is on the path to self-destruction. Jeremy Corbyn may well be voted back in by unions and members. She is not a credible alternative. I worry that some people will vote for her just because she is not him. There is no one else to stand who the public would find credible. If he wins, he will have no Parliamentary Labour Party support.

Now we hear the 100,000 new members of the last two weeks will not be allowed to vote- that will cause an uproar! They haven't joined for any other reason than to vote for Corbyn. I can see a U turn on this one coming.

Perhaps it is time for a new political party on the centre left- one that can harness the votes of millions of hardworking people, look after their interests, support our public services- our precious NHS and education system, look after the old and disabled and manage the economy and migration without making the rich hugely richer and being racist.

LuluJakey1 · 12/07/2016 21:18

I do think, across all political parties, we have the most talentless, self-serving politicians I ever remember- they are completely out of touch with communities in this country.

littledrummergirl · 12/07/2016 21:36

Weeks you are spot on. I should be a bread and butter Labour supporter. Having been a union rep (still involved, new workplace), I'm not afraid to campaign. Unfortunately my local Labour candidate/ex mp alienated me with his demeaner towards me when he was campaigning. The local branch don't inspire me.
Corbyn is a step in the right direction for me but there is something still bothering me although he's better than Eagle.
I was first able to vote in a general election in 1997-I didn't vote for Blair and have never had a Labour party that works for me.

DrDreReturns · 12/07/2016 21:39

The labour party no longer represents the people it was set up to represent - the working poor. A lot of their traditional support has begun to realise this. I think they may well go the way of the liberals about one hundred years ago and end up being a fringe party, which is a shame. The best government of the last century (Attlee's) was a Labour one, imo.

WinnieFosterTether · 12/07/2016 22:12

I think the Labour Party splitting may be the only chance we have to get a party that does represent the 'working poor' as DrDre called the traditional constituency.
If the past fortnight has shown anything it is that sections of the party are completely out of touch with how they are perceived; that their priorities ousting Corbyn are not shared with their traditional voters and, probably more damaging, that they actually despise those voters. If they didn't despise them, they would at least have put in some effort to furnish their challenger with policies, and they wouldn't have chosen a challenger in the week of Chilcot who voted for the Iraq War.

LuluJakey1 · 12/07/2016 22:30

That is because the 'working poor' are a smaller group in society than they were 100 years ago.
100 years ago my great grandparents were bringing up 10 children in the north-east of England in a two bedroomed damp, rented Tyneside flat, no heating, hot water , no bath and a privvy at the end of the yard. He worked full time and she did not work. No NHS, or benefits, children left school at 12-14 yrs. None had any real education. They were the working poor then.

Their great-grandchildren are teachers, Headteachers, Drs, accountants, photographers- they went to university, own property, earn high salaries, are very comfortably off and still vote Labour - although Labour offers us nothing but we believe in a society that loks after those in need.

Interestingly, the great-grandchildren who didn't take the opportunities education offered them- one has lived off benefits since he was 18 and he is now 33- has never worked- one does a range of low paid care jobs, one works part-time in a shop and one works at the place where prescriptions are priced. They don't own property or decent incomes. Their houses/flats are rented, have central heating, hot water, indoor bathrooms, they have the NHS, their children have opportunities at school but most of the parents don't vote or vote UKIP.
There is something not right in that. Labour is losing its heartlands and offers the middle class educated lefties almost nothing except despair at how the Party behaves.
Disaster approaches!

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 12/07/2016 22:33

If the past fortnight has shown anything it is that sections of the party are completely out of touch with how they are perceived; that their priorities ousting Corbyn are not shared with their traditional voters

Sorry but I don't really agree. Neither the PLP or Corbyn really represent traditional Labour voters.

Look at the Corbyn rallies. Momentum/SWP and StW banners. Not Labour.

WinnieFosterTether · 13/07/2016 01:47

Piglet I think we all realise you don't agree.
There were articles in various places including The Guardian saying because the event was organised at short notice people grabbed the only banners that were there. Yy they had SWP branding but most people carrying them weren't SWP.
It will be interesting to see the branding moving forward as it's expected the unions will fund banners and placards since they support Corbyn.
The young people I know who support Corbyn would have been traditional Labour voters ie working class family; grew up in a deprived area; at university or just graduated; strong interest in campaigning, etc. They're not SWP.
However that's purely anecdotal so I am not claiming they are his only type of support but likewise your claim that they aren't seems anecdotal too.

mardykerrie · 13/07/2016 02:42

I think she should leave gender out of it. By all means, think it, but don't say it.

Can you imagine in a job interview "Well, I think this department would benefit from a female administrative role."

Gender should be left out of the equation.

Werkz · 13/07/2016 14:23

Maybe, just maybe, that is because there's no such thing as "working class" anymore ?

The labour party no longer represents the people it was set up to represent - the working poor.

I think this needs unpicking because I suspect it is these very notions that cause a lot of confusion within the modern Labour party, and have led to its current predicament.

There is a lot of propaganda out there about industrial Britain. While, yes, early Labour represented the working "poor", it also represented the working "fairly sorted out" as well (it was also, interestingly, anti-vaccination). We have to remember that middle-class back then meant someone with job that required traditional university learning (law, church etc) and/or ownership of property or significant capital, and "not aristocracy".

So a skilled engineer or stone mason who rented his house would be "working class". A spinning floor foreman with responsibility for twenty highly-expensive industrial looms and sixty workers would be "working class" (today he would be managerial grade).

As an illustrative example of this aspect ... prior to Lloyd George's national insurance scheme, a significant percentage of the working class had unemployment and ill-health insurance through their membership of friendly and oddfellows' societies. In fact, this section of the working class didn't approve of Lloyd George's legislation because they distrusted the state and did not believe it would provide the same sort of insurance coverage they currently had: a position that, you could argue, was eerily prescient. The legislation, in their eyes, increased their "taxation", took away control from them, and gave little back compared to the cover they could expect from their society schemes. That is why NI was such a hard sell for Lloyd George -- because these working class people didn't want it.

So when we talk about the working "poor" in this period, we have to be careful about who we mean. The majority of the working class were people who had significant skills, knowledge and experience. Many may not have had a formal education above parochial level, but many were skilled industrial workers (you had to be intelligent to work an industrial loom; otherwise, you'd lose your fingers) and took advantage of the expansion of libraries and educational societies to better themselves. When you look at industrial working class "poverty" around this time, you are really looking at situations where a family unit had a secondary factor: alcoholism, parental abandonment, ill-health, parental death, immigration status, domestic violence, parental industrial injury, old age, too many children under age 14 etc.

Industrial working class culture did go some way to trying to negate these dangers. The average age for a working class woman to marry in 19th century industrial Manchester was actually 27 -- because that is how long it took for a working class man to save enough to start his own household.

Ultimately, it was these people that formed the early Labour movement -- and they brought their perspectives and attitudes with them. Labour was a party to represent them, not the founding of a patronising Victorian middle-class charity for the "poor and impoverished", which, weirdly, now seems to be an undertone that runs through the modern Labour party.

This is also why Thatcher won so many votes from the working class. Now hold onto your hats, because I am about to write something that will startle you. Margaret Thatcher was not a Tory. She might have been a member of the Conservative party, and the Conservative leader, and a Conservative PM, but her political attitude was one that could be more accurately described as Manchester Liberalism -- and it is this perspective, that harmonises so well with the Methodist perspective, that ran and still runs through the heart of many traditional working-class voters. And Manchester Liberalism is pretty much a perfect description for the position that UKIP espouses, so no wonder they are harvesting working class votes like a combine harvester on acid.

We can no longer particularly see this aspect of "the old Labour vote" because it is rarely reflected in the media and when it is, it is usually framed by some sort of sneer -- usually from someone affiliated to the Labour party, unfortunately.

This is why I say it is unlikely Labour can repair itself -- because it doesn't even realise where its most serious injuries are. It's pulling itself apart over arguments about whether to bandage its leg or its arm, while repeated stabbing itself in the heart.

LurkingHusband · 13/07/2016 14:27

Has anyone read "If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It" by Ken Livingstone ?

It was written in 1987, and absolutely nails the problem the Labour Party faced then. The problem the Labour party faces now. And it also manages to completely explain Tony Blair - even though he was only a shadow minister in 1987.

His analysis (and I agree with it) was that Thatchers "genius" was to treat the working classes like they were middle class (homeowning being the greatest example). Because if you treat people as middle-class. They vote as middle class.

Ken describes this as changing the pyramid of society - where the bottom working class could outvote the smaller middle and upper classes - into an "egg" of society where the middle classes could shit on the working classes with aplomb.

(Rests case).

Werkz · 13/07/2016 14:58

There is a problem with that assessment, Lurking.

Right to Buy was actually a Labour policy. The Thatcher government only promoted and expanded RTB because it needed a way to offload local authority liabilities as local authority debts were counted into the public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) -- and Britain was financially screwed at the end of the 70s and had had to ask the IMF for a loan. It's also the reason for the privatisation trend; Britain had to get those liabilities off the state's books.

These moves were spun as "empowering people" and it worked. We need to remember that nationalisation under the Thatcher government quite often took the form of a kind of national mutualisation, rather than corporatisation: shares in British Gas were offered to the man on the street (the Tell Sid campaign), not wholesale to a foreign power company.

It's also quite interesting to note that RTB in the 80s was the biggest transfer of wealth from the state to the working class in British history -- that's is why I can never really rage against it. The mistake made was that no-one ever thought that the change in population and make-up of Britain, along with global financial capital flows, would create a scenario where huge amounts of cheap social housing would be required again. In the mid 70s, the birth rate had plunged, and it was viewed to be a long-term phenomenon.

To my mind, RTB is a very similar to the Beeching Axe -- no one ever assumed in the late '60s that, in the age of the car, we would still need a spider's web of railway tracks and stations. Fifty years later, of course, those tracks and stations would be a godsend.

Werkz · 13/07/2016 15:01

Sorry, to be clear ... Right to Buy was originally a Labour policy. The Thatcher government did not create it; they only promoted and expanding the already existing policy.

GiddyOnZackHunt · 13/07/2016 15:06

Interesting. Certainly in South Wales hard working coal miners took home a good wage. In combination with low cost secure council housing and good grammar education for bright children it was quite a good life for their families post ww2. Assuming no hideous accidents or illness at work obviously and a man who didn't lose all his wages to the drink on pay day.

MangoMoon · 13/07/2016 15:07

Labour was a party to represent them, not the founding of a patronising Victorian middle-class charity for the "poor and impoverished", which, weirdly, now seems to be an undertone that runs through the modern Labour party.

YY Werkz.
That's why I felt unrepresented as a blue collar worker.

When working tax credits came in that (for me) was the worst type of 'pat on the head, benevolent benefactor' policy.
It trapped people in a cycle that meant you had to take an income drop to progress in the workplace, whilst enabling employers to wages low.

Swipe left for the next trending thread